Although the opinions expressed to me by Governors of prefectures have been frequently recorded in these pages, I have not felt at liberty to identify more than one of the Excellencies who were good enough to express their views to me. A friend who knew many Governors offered me the following criticism, which I thought just: "They are too practical and too much absorbed in administration to be able to think. Often they read very little after leaving the university. They have seldom anything to tell you about other than ordinary things, and they seldom show their hearts. You cannot learn much from Governors who have nothing original to say or are fearful or live in their frock coats or do not mean to show half their minds or are practising the old official trick of talking round and round and always evading the point. One fault of Governors is that they are being continually transferred from prefecture to prefecture. You have no doubt yourself noticed how often Governors were new to their prefectures. But with all the faults that our Governors have, there are not a few able, good and kind men among them and they are not recruited from Parliament but must be members of the Civil Service. One of the most common words in our political life is _genshitsu_, 'responsibility for one's own words.' If Governors fear to assume the responsibility of their own views they are only of a part with a great deal of the official world." We turned away from the northern sea coast and struck south in order to cross Japan to the Inland Sea en route for Kobe and Tokyo. As we came through Hyogo prefecture my companion pointed to hill after hill which had been afforested since his youth. One of the things which interested me was the number and the tameness of the kites which were catching frogs in the paddies. Before I left Hyogo I had the advantage of a chat with one who for many years past had thought about the rural situation in Japan generally. He spoke of "the late Professor King's idealising of the Japanese farmer's condition." He went on: "While King laid stress on the ability to be self-supporting on a small area he ignored the extent to which many rural people are underfed. The change in the Meiji era has been a gradual transference from ownership to tenancy. Many so-called representative farmers have been able to add field to field until they have secured a substantial property and have ceased to be farmers. An extension of tenancy is to be deplored, not only because it takes away from the farmer a feeling of independence and of incentive, but because it creates a parasitic class which in Japan is perhaps even more parasitic than in the West. A landowner in the West almost invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan a landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the State are often imperfectly understood.